paranoiacblack

Your analogy is definitely misleading.

> if I fail to show up for something where I said I'd show up, they're going to bitch

This never happened. It's more like, "if I decide to stop showing up because it no longer benefits me and give my friends a month's notice, they're going to bitch." Sure, that's true, but it seriously doesn't make you evil or mean the end of all friendships ever like Marco would make it seem. It just doesn't work like that.

Also, If something is universally applicable, it might have a nugget of truth somewhere, by the way.

> locked-in APIs > interop is toast

Between your post and the author's, I feel like we're talking past each about what the above two phrases mean.

First of all, what do you call a "locked-in API"? I would imagine it'd be an API written in a proprietary language or only works on certain systems or browsers. Personally, I haven't seen that from any of the mentioned companies. Afaik, most of Google's, Facebook's, and Twitter's API work on any browser available, any computer that can run those browsers, including mini-computers and smartphones, even some dumb phones. Where's the lock-in? The fact that you put your data in their databases? The fact that there isn't a single format shared between each?

About interoperability being "toast," to what extent? I could probably point you to a large amount of websites and web services that have integration with Google, Facebook, and Twitter, sometimes all at the same time. Sounds like that they can operate together to me. Perhaps, you want them to provide integration between each other?

I agree that Facebook started a "war", but I don't think any of these companies want to "close us in" any more than they did when they first started. Sure, you can look at the closing of Google Reader as the antithesis of openness and RSS but you'd somehow seem to miss that Google, Facebook, and Twitter still support a lot of APIs that promote openness and interoperability. Actually, they continue to release more and more APIs as do other startups (i.e. Github).

Openness and interoperability aren't going away, they're merely being refined. That might mean taking away the hacker's toy for a bit while some kinks get worked out (i.e. Google's Jabber issue and the switch to Blink). It might also mean that we live in a monoculture for a while (Webkit). But regardless, the web is steadily improving and no matter how much you all try to spin it, RSS and Google Reader really aren't the martyrs you claim them to be. It sucks that even a successful product can be mercilessly shut down by the evil Google tyrants, but it shouldn't be surprising at all.

Sometimes companies make decisions that hurt a part of their user base for some perceived benefit for other users. Did Google fuck up by closing Reader? Probably. But it's not the end of the world.

> In essence, there maybe meaning or maybe not; you probably won't find out till you are dead. By then, you are dead. This is a rabbit hole.

You've got what I'm trying to say perfectly.

> Why does it matter what you pick?

I don't think it does matter what you pick, honestly. I like to simplify it to a complex game of chess. No matter what, the game will end. If you wish to end the game early, you can choose poor moves or resign. But if you want to see the game out to the very end and possibly learn something in the process, you should choose what you feel to be the best move. It doesn't matter if you pick the best move or not, it only matters that you pick something you believe in. Similarly, in life, you do the best you can. You gather all of your facilities, your mind, your gut, your personality, etc, and you follow that path. No other path is inherently better than another and no other life is inherently worth more or less than yours. That's not to say we're all equal in life, but rather that we're indistinguishable in death.

A meaningful death only makes sense in context of a meaningless death, which what we're sort of "destined" to have. In the scope of the majority, the planet, the universe, our lives are fairly unimportant. Similarly, our deaths are equally unimportant. They don't mean anything except for an external stimulus to those who have faint memories of you. A meaningful death would be the opposite of that. It's purposefully nebulous because if I could have meaningful death, it must have meant that my life was meaningful or that I somehow derived the meaning of life. Absurdists believe that there probably is some underlying meaning to life, but that it cannot be comprehended by humankind.

Anyways, I agree with you that I'm merely an external event. In your example, the dog is neither worthy or unworthy, since that's subjective and has no inherent meaning. Whether the dog is worthy or unworthy is also irrelevant to its life or death. That's to say that although I truly believe that there's no purpose to all of this, I cannot answer that question until I've died. In that case, my life is spent trying to find a meaning in death.

I mean, I guess you could boycott their services and products if you're deeply disappointed with Google. These concerns probably aren't relevant to this because similarly to the OAuth playground, it's simply a developer usability tool. Like the webdev tools and other web-related Google things.

Your reasons for continuing are optimistic and perhaps privileged. For a large amount of people, especially for minorities and other groups in the past, contribution to the long-term well-being of humanity was not the goal. Some people had to watch as their children or parents were taken from them by war or sometimes trade and slavery. Perhaps those people sought revenge and reunion. Others were born into extreme poverty and prejudice. Perhaps they seek equality. Others were born into abundant wealth and perhaps they seek to amass more wealth and take advantage of a money-driven world. Yet other were born into internment camps and reservations. Maybe they continue out of ancestral pride or out of a sense of justice and reality. Because of nature of humans (i.e., greediness and hatred), in my opinion, the long-term well-being of humanity is a feeble goal meant for Engineers and Scientists for the most part.

At the same time, as Stephen Fry points out here, some people continue because others won't allow them to quit. Or, in a lot of situations, they can't quit without throwing the lives of their families and friends into a gambit.

Personally, I'm more of an Absurdist or Nihlist, and I don't really see much of a point to life. I continue because I'm seeking some kind of meaningful death. In that journey, I've picked up many people as acquaintances, lovers, family, etc, and if I can at least make some of them happier or better off, then maybe it was worth it.

You're just missing the point entirely. Fry isn't setting up Cancer and Diabetes and Depression or suicidal thoughts as equals, but rather as equally likely ailments. "Make an effort" is blaming the victim for something usually out of their control which is similar to blaming you for getting cancer. Imagine if you were telling someone with skin cancer or lung cancer that they should "make an effort" to stay out of the sun or quit cigarettes. You're trivializing the disease that's already there.

And you're not the only one. This is a common attitude people have. It's as if people who really feel detached from this life and want to end it do not have that right. Instead, millions of people would rather sit down and debate whether it's ethical for someone to kill themselves or have a physician-assisted suicide. Maybe we all want to believe that everything is a Hollywood-esque setting where you just need to find the right people and love of your life to get everything back together. In reality, mental illness (cyclothymia, in this case) is just as real as every other illness and you can't just "make an effort" to get rid of it. I'm sorry about your illness, but try to not to trivialize other's, it isn't a competition.

What do you mean? Have you ever used http://angular-ui.github.io/? These are all excellent in my experience.

No, I actually agree w/ you 100%. The weirdness in aspect ratio supports this. Or maybe I've seen too main of these that are spamware. Or maybe I'm too hipster about web design.

Yeah, I was wondering about this as a sort of intro or thesis to this discussion. That quote is pretty blatantly untrue and if that's the premise of this argument, well... It seems like it would be more like "women are told that they are only good enough for certain jobs and those jobs pay less."

I wonder about this as well. The description of Stylus is very appropriate and it's well known that Stylus provides a more powerful feature set than both LESS and SASS as well as optional syntax that makes it easier to integrate into your workflow, IMO.

The community might not be as big as the SASS, but I love using Roots CSS for all my Node projects.

Make sure you file DMCA takedown notices for anyone who ever makes any similar icons, though.

Side by side so I have less editing space? I have emacs and terminator split 5 or 6 ways and optionally fullscreened if needed. Being able to read documentation, cheat sheets, watch videos, live reload, and handle issues while not switching windows through my terminal is a giant productivity boost. Side-by-side just makes both parts less enjoyable, especially on a small laptop screen.

Looks like an open and shut case of Google being hilariously evil again. What's going to happen when they run out of blankets, huh? Are they are going to shut that down like Reader? I just don't know who to trust anymore.

> If you want to complain about the state of the Web, at least take into the account that the Web/Hypertext is about more than just text.

Yeah, I was wondering about this. Is he advocating turning the entire web into a text file? How does that even work with content rich websites like twitter or facebook or JS-necessary sites like your favorite music/video streaming site? Yes, encoding text with other technologies to increase the user's experience is going to make your file size bigger, but who cares?

Indeed. If you decide to stop dating someone because of an application on their phone, you are the mature one and they are the child.

I disagree. I think the biggest privilege one can have is a fair start. Being able to live as you'd like without picking up hundreds of years of stigma and injustices or having to work extremely hard to distinguish yourself as someone that can be trusted.

> I would imagine a lesbian black woman with an Ivy league education has much greater odds of success than a straight white guy from the trailer park/slum who struggles with reading/writing skills.

Privilege isn't about odds of success, it's about proportional work to become successful. When someone doesn't trust you or has something against you because of your ethnicity or gender, you have to work two or three times as hard for the same success someone else has. That's the problem.

> I find it interesting that it is generally considered correct and fair that somebody has better income and quality of life because of high intelligence when this is a factor as much outside your control as race or gender.

This is just the American Dream blown out of proportion, as usual.

We'll never agree because I'm arguing about what racism is (a semantic argument) and you're arguing about how racism is defined (a pedantic argument). Perhaps my original post was a red herring. I was merely justifying that what she said lines up with a known definition, not that it is the ONLY correct definition.

Also, your definition of what racism connotes is severely lacking as well. Simplifying racism to "something that connotes immorality" is a gross oversimplification.

No, you're missing that racism is a systematic oppression of a certain group or people. HN isn't the best place for speaking about social issues, so I won't write you an essay about what's wrong about what you're saying. I'll just say I believe you and others are conflating the terms prejudice and racism. I'm guessing that's what you're describing by "common-usage-racis[m]." Indeed, black people can be prejudiced against white people, and that prejudice can be because of race. Racism, however, needs a little bit more than that. Particularly, institutionalization.

> pop over to Zim

I don't know what this means. But please elaborate what's wrong with that statement. Please understand that a word's definition is not necessarily it's meaning.

I don't understand what's wrong with this. This is quite literally the definition of racism in a sociological context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#Sociological. You're going to need to disprove a lot of social science before you tackle this definition.

> She drags the discussion down to one of racism because someone uses the word lynching in a completely different context.

If you're going to tell me that lynching does not have racist undertones, you need to qualify it.

Yeah, this was my reaction as well. I'm kind of surprise someone has fondness for Desktop Apps anymore, because I only have one and it's my web browser so I do development and get other work done. Other than that it's terminal based running non-gui applications. Desktop doesn't really have a place on the web from where I'm sitting.

Is this really written in Cappuccino? I get some crazy graphical glitches when I click any of the buttons or dropdowns on that page. I hope this isn't the quality they were talking about, but I will admit that looks like it belongs in a Desktop app.

> inane topics (vim, Coffeescript)

Sorry, you're going to need to elaborate here or else you're really sensationalist. Also, you can't be serious about the community not admitting we need to learn how to structure programs better, as if that were the only problem. I didn't learn that UNTIL I started working on the web.

I'd argue that calling someone a "colossal fucking idiot of the highest caliber" because they did something you don't agree with is hyperbolic and pollutes the discussion. I'm merely teasing that logic so that other people can understand that offense is relative and thus their anecdotes about how they wouldn't be offended or understand anyone for being offended are red herrings.

Unfortunately, it seems to be winning the argument here with several proposing boycotting and swearing against using SendHub in the future if they don't fire her. All the while people seem to think that the problem here is "women are sensitive and don't like dick jokes, we better watch what we say," instead of asking, "how do we fix this?"

I'm not finding the exact quote right now, but Sergey always wanted Google to be able to interact with the user and suggest things to them automatically. Google Now is a part of that strategy.

> I made the assumption based on her responses to comments on her blog

Fair enough.

I see how you got here, but that's not what I'm arguing. The parent's post seems to imply that anyone that would react strongly to a joke is a "colossal fucking idiot." This seems to imply that the joke's content has no relation to the reaction. So I was just wondering if that really holds. As per the parent's reply, it does. I'm not even barely implying that threatening to kill political figures is the next logical step. I'm implying that there definitely is some hard limit being ignored or maybe I'm wrong.